


on percentage chances

by fruitbattery



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: (ivy's virus makes her say things you might find in a spam email), A little, Canon-Typical Bastardry, F/F, Raph is a Professional Scientist, background tim jonny and ashes, i see women in space i say let's make them lesbians., spot the tma and mechs song references, warning for slight loss of bodily autonomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22915159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitbattery/pseuds/fruitbattery
Summary: Ivy gets a virus, and Raphaella makes time for her.
Relationships: Ivy Alexandria/Raphaella la Cognizi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 87
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	on percentage chances

Raphaella la Cognizi is a practical woman. When she is outside of her lab, she is open to socializing, violence, and other general nonsense. But when she is in her lab, it is All Science, All The Time. She hasn’t the seconds to spare talking to her crewmates when there could be Dubiously Ethical Scientific Progress made instead! She is, after all, the ship’s Science Officer!

So when she hears laughter outside her door, one fine space morning, she doesn’t question it. She doesn’t even question it when she hears Ivy’s voice among it, although the archivist rarely partakes in the nonsense these days, preferring instead to read quietly in a corner. No, what catches Raph’s attention is the words Ivy’s saying.

“ **Congratulations! You are the nine hundred and ninety ninth visitor to FreeBoardGames.Net. You have won a brand new iPad!** Guys! Please stop! It’s not that funny!”

Over the laughter of what sounds like Tim, Ashes, and Jonny, Raphaella crosses the lab to the door and calmly opens it. “What, my dear, dear, crewmates, is going on out here, and why, dear crewmates, specifically outside my lab?”

Tim has the decency to look slightly chagrined; Ivy looks incredibly fucking chagrined. Composing himself, Jonny speaks. “Our dear archivist seems to have gotten herself in a little bit of a pickle by hooking herself in to a strange computer.” Raph can feel her eyebrows slowly raising higher and higher. Ivy just _looks_ at her, more pitiful than Raphaella’s ever seen her.

“Ivy. What _were_ you thinking.”

Ivy actually hangs her head. “I….. it was the only computer left that had a copy of a book I really wanted.” She brightens. “But now I do have that book! And there was only a 23% chance of infection. I checked. **You won’t last 5 minutes playing this game.** ” 

While Jonny and the rest burst out laughing again, Raphaella takes a moment to really look at Ivy’s face. She looks exhausted– worse even than three days, reading curled up in the same painful pose without food and water, used to leave her. She looks genuinely ashamed of what she’s said, too, and Raph’s sure the assholes laughing at her aren’t helping (even if it is a little funny). She makes a decision. “Alright, Ivy, come with me. Let’s try and fix it, yeah? Better than just being entertainment for these chucklefucks.” And without another word, Raphaella turns and walks back into her lab.

The gentle jeering of the three outside is muffled immediately as Ivy steps in and closes the door behind her. The archivist’s voice is soft but cutting. “Well, that was harrowing.” 

She sways on the spot, and Raphaella darts forward to catch her before she hits the ground. Raph’s wings wrap around Ivy’s torso, holding her up so she can open Ivy’s eyes and shine a small torch in them. “Shit. Out cold.” Raph lays Ivy gently on the floor right there, and goes to rummage around in her personal storage for something more comfortable to lie on. (Damn it. She’d been meaning to swipe a cot from the old med bay, but she couldn’t seem to break herself of the habit of just falling asleep at her workbench.) Everything in her lab is just paper or metal or wood, though, so Raphaella sighs and heads for the door, intending to grab some linens from her almost never-used cabin at the other end of the ship.

“Raphi? Please don’t leave.”

The voice from the floor is small and pitiful, and it grabs Raph’s heart like it’s a rare-earth magnet and she’s Jonny d’fuckin’Ville. Raph immediately drops down to her knees beside Ivy. “Hey, hey, it’s ok. I’m just getting you something more comfortable to lie on while I try and figure out what’s wrong with you, alright?”

Ivy nods, and pushes herself into a sitting position, wrapping her arms around her knees. Raphaella quickly unbuckles her own jacket from around her wings and hands it to Ivy. “Here. Lay on this until I get back. Won’t be five minutes.” Ivy nods again and takes the jacket, rubbing her thumb over the worn leather in a familiar method of calming-down-by-touching-things, and Raphaella turns and leaves the lab.

 _God damn it, Cognizi_ , she grumps to herself, rummaging through her closet on the other end of the ship a few minutes later, _way to go. Way to fucking go. Not like you’re supposed to be the cool and practical one around here._ Science officer, her ass. Where’s the room for softness in there? The room for giving your crewmate your favorite jacket because you’re guilty you don’t have a cot for her and for allowing distractions into the lab and for directly offering to help a teammate with a problem that Brian or Nastya can just fix tomorrow when they get back from their supply run. God. Fuck. She bundles the sheets and blankets and pillows into her arms with a tad more force than necessary, using her wings to carry the extras _(she needs to elevate the patient to work on her properly, of course)_ and heading back to the lab.

Raphaella passes Marius and the Toy Soldier on the way back. Marius is gleefully telling the Soldier about all the delightful things he’d heard from Jonny regarding Ivy’s condition. Raphaella stops dead and turns her fiercest scowl on him.

“Soldier, please carry these for me.” She and her wings thrust the huge bundle of linens into its arms, and she turns to Marius without waiting to see if the Toy Soldier is actually capable of carrying all that (it is not). “Von Raum, I would appreciate it if you would kindly quit talking about Ivy’s very sensitive condition like that.”

“Oh, so she’s Ivy and not Miss Alexandria now. Interesting.” 

When Marius draws out “interesting” like that, Raphaella sometimes wants to punch him in the face. Like now. But she refrains, instead choosing the snappy retort route. “Well, Von Raum, only one of you treats my work with respect while we’re all stuck on this ship together, so I choose to treat her as a closer friend than your smarmy ass.” Raphaella turns on her heel, but Marius isn’t done.

“Miss Cognizi–” he really overdoes it on the pronunciation– “I will do as you wish and stop gossiping to our lovely wooden friend here.” The Soldier looks up from where it’s still trying to gather up all the blankets trailing from its arms, and waves cheerily. “I just wanted to make you aware– we wouldn’t want our Science Officer giving just anyone preferential treatment, now would we?”

Raphaella rolls her eyes. “Soldier, don’t tell anyone else what he told you, and come with me.” The Toy Soldier gives up on trying to get all the blankets in its wingless grasp, instead tying a few around its waist and shoulders, before saluting and walking stiffly after Raphaella. She isn’t sure how her order of silence will hold up under careful wording from the other Mechanisms, but it should do as well as she can for now. She’s troubled, though– why had Marius’s teasing gotten to her so badly? She’s used to the other Mechanisms being shits, hell, she can give as well as she gets most days. Why today? Why the still-simmering resentment towards Jonny and Tim and Ashes and Marius (and even the Toy Soldier) for laughing at Ivy’s discomfort? It’s not exactly new behavior from them. Her academic detachment seems to have fled her.

Raph reaches the door to her lab without realizing and takes a few seconds to settle back into Science Mode before knocking gently on her own door. “Ivy? I’m back, can I come in?”

She hears the smallest possible “Yes” from inside, and opens it. In the too-dim light, indicating that no one’s moved to set off the motion sensor in the last five minutes, Ivy sits with her back pressed against one of Raphaella’s workbenches. Raph’s jacket is around her shoulders, and her hands clutch the lapels. As Raphaella steps into the lab, the lights flicker on, and Ivy cringes away from the brightness. She almost resembles a turtle, the way her head retracts into the jacket.

“Ivy, hey, I’m sorry about the light, would you like it off?” Raph’s jacket shifts in a way that would seem to indicate a nod. She turns and takes the bedding from the Toy Soldier. “Soldier, go back to Marius and tell him I’m sorry for snapping at him.” It salutes her again, crisp as ever, and soldiers off down the hallway. Raph closes the door to the lab and waves a hand over the motion sensor, dimming the lights almost to darkness. Ivy sighs with relief and un-turtles herself from out of Raph’s coat. Her red hair catches the narrow beam of light from the hallway coming in around the door.

“You can turn it up a little to work, if you’d like.” Ivy’s throat sounds raspy as _hell_ , and Raphaella wonders if Ivy had been speaking against her will while she was gone. It can’t be pleasant, not being able to control the words coming out of your mouth. Ivy looks so haggard that Raph’s chest tightens in sympathy. 

“No need– check out these new wings I modded last week.” With a wave of her hand, Raphaella’s wings light up with a soft blue radiance, bathing the room and Ivy in a pale imitation of moonlight. In the glow, Ivy looks transported– she’s not staring at Raph, she’s _gazing_ , taking in the new wings with a startlingly open expression of amazement.

“Holy shit, Raphi. Those are– those are sick.”

Raph feels her cheeks heat at Ivy’s praise. “It’s– it’s nothing, really. More for aesthetics and general not-bumping-into-things. For really seeing, I have this.” She holds up her trusty flashlight. “I’ll just have you close your eyes. Except when, you know, I need to look into them. To see what’s wrong.” _Cool it, Cognizi. What is with you today?_

For her part, Ivy’s still looking at Raph with almost-literal stars in her eyes, given how the little lights reflect off of her glasses. It’s actually really distracting, so Raphaella goes about setting up a small, makeshift pallet for Ivy on a section of floor not recently covered in chemicals. The textures of the different fabrics help ground her back into scientist mode. This is a problem– her friend’s brain has been invaded by something. She is a scientist, after all, and scientists solve problems.

When it’s done, she turns back to Ivy to help her over to the “bed.” Ivy is slumped further down the side of the bench, almost flat on the floor, but her eyes are still open, staring at Raph with an almost glassy look. She’s breathing, though, and her mouth is still moving, and Raphaella hears a string of random letters and numbers. 

“ **X9ELCIU49SDP0E0DLDKF’’;;;;;;JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ** ” 

Ivy’s voice is a robotic monotone, and that scares Raphaella more than she might care to admit. Ever since Raph’s been here, Ivy’s been trying to teach herself the cadences of human speech. Amnesia plus a computer brain makes those sorts of things rather difficult, after all. This speech is pure computer, worse even than when Raph first joined up. And unlike before, Ivy seems to be completely unaware of what’s happening. “Shit. Ivy, let’s– can you hear me?” 

The babble stops, and Ivy shakes her head around briefly. “Yeah.” 

She sounds even hoarser and quieter, and Raph’s heart aches. “Alright. Let’s get you over here. Do you think you can get there yourself?” Ivy just reaches her arms out, and once again, Raph thinks about the Ivy she’d seen when she’d first set foot on the Aurora– reserved, always hiding in a book, going quietly to Nastya if she needed help or repairs. Planetside she’d been more eager and outspoken, but even then it was mostly for the sole purpose of getting to the library faster. Now, though, Ivy is almost scarily trusting. It’s really worrying Raphaella– Ivy is soft in Raph’s arms, almost limp but still holding her own head up, mesmerized by the lights on Raph’s wings. Raph lays her down as gently as she can on the human-sized pile of blankets and goes to grab a last blanket to put over her, but Ivy won’t let go of Raph’s neck.

She won’t let go, and so Raph’s attempt to push herself up from squatting to standing just overbalances her, and she sprawls awkwardly sideways instead, her head landing on Ivy’s stomach and her left wing folding under her awkwardly. “Oof. Ivy– let go–”

Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no. Ivy is not a tactile person, but her hands have found Raphaella’s hair. This is really, really bad. _Snap out of it, Cognizi._ Raph chokes down a contented sigh and gently lifts Ivy’s hands out of her hair. The virus is really, really fucking with Ivy’s head, Raphaella decides, and so it would be even more immoral of her than usual to derive any enjoyment from anything that’s happening. So she places Ivy’s hands back down at her sides and wordlessly rises to fetch a notebook and a few tools.

“Stay.”

_Fuck._

Raph turns and Ivy’s eyes are closed, but in the light of her wings Raph can see tears slipping out of them. Her arms are outstretched, reaching for Raphi, and suddenly Raphi wants nothing more than to lie down beside her and just give her a goddamn hug like she deserves. Instead, she keeps moving towards her cabinets. “I’m right here, Ivy, I’m not going anywhere. I’m getting tools and I’m going to help you.” Ivy’s arms drop, and she wipes her eyes, and she sniffles, and Raph is suddenly moving much quicker in an effort to come back to her side.

“It hurts…”

“Ivy, love, I’m sorry, I–”

 _Love????_ No. Nope. No time for this bullshit. Absolutely not. She’ll just have to hope Ivy doesn’t remember in the morning. And she, Raphaella, will deal with this approximately never. Great. Fine. Good.

“ **Would you like to meet hot singles in your area?** ”

Raphaella whips around, hands full of supplies, and stares at Ivy on the floor. Her eyes are open now, and locked on Raph, and that brief eye contact is just enough to set them both howling with laughter. 

“Fuck, Ivy, I don’t think there _are_ any ‘hot singles’ in our current sector of space. This virus needs to try harder.” Ivy hasn’t stopped laughing, and it would be concerning if it didn’t mean her cheeks were rapidly gaining their color back. 

After a few very long seconds, Ivy composes herself long enough to speak. “Raphi, as long as _you_ are single, there will always be hot singles in our sector of space.” Ivy's voice is slurring slowly back into the patterns of sleep, but she sounds as sincere as Raph's ever heard her.

It does take a good ten seconds before her brain catches up to the words it just heard, and she lands on the ground with a soft thump. Ivy, for her part, seems to have no such reservation– her eyes are closed, she’s got a small, peaceful smile, and her breathing has evened out to the point Raphaella thinks she might be asleep. Raph shakes her head. _Right. Time for that later._ She’s got a crewmate to fix.

Several hours later, Raphaella has made almost no progress. She has some experience with computer viruses, but given that she wasn’t the one to mechanize Ivy, she really has no idea what to do with the jumbled readouts she’s getting. Nastya and the Drumbot will surely be back in a few hours, and then one of them will be able to help. Raphaella sighs, uncurling her legs from under her and rising, intending to doze off in her most comfortable chair. At the lack of Raphi by her side, though, Ivy stirs, and hugs the leather jacket tighter around herself.

“Cold…..”

“”Ivy, would you like more blankets? I’m about to go to sleep, but I can get some for you.” 

Ivy mumbles something into the jacket that Raph can’t hear. She steps closer, and Ivy points up at her.

“Warm.”

Raphi feels her cheeks heat up again. How very _human._ “What?”

“You’re warm.”

Raph steps back. She needs to think. “Ivy, you’re quite literally not in your right mind. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Ivy gives her that _look_ again, the startlingly vulnerable one, and reaches out her arms even further, and Raphi finds herself coming back, drawn to her like…. well. A light-up moth? To a….. metaphor’s never been her strong suit. Whatever. She lays down on the floor, OK? And Ivy immediately shifts to be closer to her, and if Raphi’s wings immediately wrap around her and surround her in their glow, then that doesn’t have to mean anything.

Raphaella reaches up for the comlink hung on the wall, and pages the Toy Soldier. “Would you– kindly– as soon as Nastya and Brian arrive, let me know, make sure Brian’s dial is set to Nice Brian, and send him to my lab? Thanks.” She doesn’t wait for a response before hanging up and lying back down, curling in behind Ivy almost instinctually. It’s really quite comfortable, having half of her body on a few layers of blankets instead of slumped over her desk. Raph finds herself falling asleep almost immediately.

It’s probably not more than four hours later when she wakes to a gentle knocking on the door, and the Toy Soldier’s voice over the comms. “Miss Cognizi, Brian Is Here. Miss Cognizi, Brian Is Here. Miss Cognizi, Brian Is Here.” 

Raphaella groans, and picks up the receiver. “Thank you, Soldier. How long have you been telling me that?”

“Twenty Minutes!”

“Thank you, Soldier. You can stop now.” Raph hangs up and rubs her temples in an attempt to wake up further. “Come in, Brian.”

The lab door opens, adding the hallway light to the light from Raph’s wings. The Drumbot ia there, wearing his Mechanism-repair tool belt, morality switch visibly set to Means Justify Ends. Raphaella relaxes a little when she sees the switch. “Hey Brian, glad you could make it. Our resident Archivist seems to have a bit of a bug in her system, and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.”

Brian smiles gently at the still-sleeping Ivy, with Raph still close to her. “You couldn’t fix her, so you snuggled her all night?” 

His tone is light, no more than gentle teasing, but Raph’s hackles still raise remembering Jonny and Tim and Ashes’s reactions. “She…. she was cold. I think it was a virus side effect?”

Brian nods, and moves over to one of the countertops to set out his tools. Raphaella stiffly unfurls off the floor and gives herself only a moment to shake the tightness out of her limbs before heading over to turn on the overhead light and assist Brian. They’re not two minutes into figuring out a plan, when Ivy stirs.

“Good morning. How **call now for a free credit check** are you? Fuck.” 

Instead of laughing, Brian just smiles and responds, you know, like a person talking to someone who’s sick. Not some sort of asshole. Raph should really stop calling him Boring Brian in her head. “We’re well on our way to knowing how to help you, Ivy, so I’d say that makes me pretty happy!” 

Ivy smiles, a genuine, rare thing, and Raph feels a little like she’s gotten shot. Except, you know, less pain. She shoves it aside for the time being, and for the next few hours she and Brian are devoting all their energy to troubleshooting Ivy’s brain. It’s a fascinating process, and one that ends up taking a lot out of Ivy, so afterward while Ivy is sleeping Raphaella turns to Brian.

“So. You used to be a doctor.”

Brian nods, but doesn’t answer, as if he senses there’s more to come.

“I’ve been having this weird problem, and I wondered if you could help. Specifically, I’ve had trouble breathing. My chest feels tight, and my face feels warm a lot, and it seems to respond mainly to the speech of others.”

Brian thinks for a second. “Well, Raph, that is a little strange. Let me do an examination, because this sounds like pneumonia, and I wouldn’t want it to spread to the rest of the crew if it is. The speech thing is strange, though….”

After a thorough medical examination, consisting of looking at Raphaella’s throat and listening to her lungs with a stethoscope, Brian is unable to deduce what’s wrong. “Could I ask,” he starts hesitantly, “whether it happens in response to just anyone speaking, or only…. one person?”

Raph ponders the question. Slowly, things start falling into place in her head. “Oh, Brian Brian Brian I’m feeling it again make it stop. Make it stop.” She looks at Ivy, brow unfurrowed, not concentrating on a book, peaceful, lovely… beautiful? Ivy’s lying on the ground in a little nest of Raphi’s own creation, and she feels softness swell in her chest, the metaphorical feeling threatening to crowd out the actual organs she knows are in there. 

Raphaella realizes she’s been staring when Brian clears his metal throat, attempting to be unobtrusive. “Raph, I think you and Miss Ivy should have a talk. I….. I remember that feeling, I felt it a few times….. before.” He stares down at his metal hands. “Sometimes I wish I could feel it again, but even when I think of him, how we used to be, I can never seem to get that feeling back. I remember it was….. exciting.” Raph has never really been one for hugs, but she kind of thinks she wants to go 2 for 2 today and hug the Drumbot. He just looks so _sad_ in a way she doesn’t know how to deal with. Before she can get up, though, Brian continues.

“You should enjoy the feeling while you still can. Tell her. Tell her soon, and you’ll both get so many lifetimes’ worth of happiness.” He sighs. “She seems to be waking right about now. Tell her.” 

“Thank you, Brian. I’ll let you know Ivy’s status…. in a little bit.” The Drumbot is getting up to leave, and his small smile indicates he knows exactly what she meant. His smile is no less sad, but he seems genuinely happy for her.

“Good luck, Miss Cognizi.” And her lab door closes behind him.

Raph shakes her head back and forth for a bit too long, feeling her lips flap from side to side. (She’s not sure where she picked that gesture up, but it’s proved marvelously effective for clearing her head.) Just as Brian said, Ivy is beginning to stir and stretch. She’s still moving slowly, but to Raphaella’s trained eye it looks less like virus-induced sluggishness, and more like general grogginess from just having woken up. 

“..... Raph?”

Raph immediately hurries over to Ivy, kneeling on the floor beside her. “Hey. Hey, are you OK, do you have a virus still, do you….” 

Ivy cuts her off by wordlessly grabbing her head and pressing their foreheads together. “There is a ninety-nine percent chance that I am absolutely fine, Raph.” She pauses, considering. “Did….. did you….. did I sleep wrapped in your wings for most of last night?”

Raph’s breath catches in her throat, and her traitorous non-mechanized skin prickles with the worst flush yet. “Uh….” _Cool it. You’re still a scientist._

Ivy smiles. “Because it was the best sleep I’d gotten in, well, a long time. It seems my inability to properly use my brain also helped, but your wings, and yourself, likely provided near-optimal sleeping conditions. Something about soft light and warmth.”

Raph’s heart is beating like a drum. “Well, Brian told me…. something, before you woke back up from the procedure. He told me, how would you put it? If I don’t tell you how you’ve been making me feel this last day, there’s a 0% chance that you’ll know, or do anything about it.” Ivy’s head quirks in curiosity, but she makes no move to interrupt. “So,” Raphi continues, “I figure I could give you a list of symptoms, and you could use your amazing and newly fixed brain to look them up and tell me what you find.” Raphi takes a minute to breathe into their forehead-to-forehead connection, taking Ivy’s hands and covering them from any prying cameras or mechanical eyes with her wings. The light comforts her, and she presses on. “Tightening throat. Flushed skin. Sweat, stuttering, nervousness. All around you, Ivy.” Her face is so close…. “Could you tell me what you think that means?”

Ivy closes her eyes, and is clearly looking something up. After ten seconds or so of breathless silence, she responds. “It kind of sounds like you might be allergic to me.”

Raph physically restrains herself from giggling. Giggling. She doesn’t _do_ that. There will be so many more things to learn about herself in this new world, no matter what Ivy’s response is. “Look again, Ive. Scroll past all the medical stuff.”

Ivy’s eyes remain closed, but she’s so close that Raph can feel it when her face gets warm as well. “Oh…… alright. I was hoping that might be the case, actually. It’s clear to me that something about you calms me down, makes me able to sleep, draws me out of my books to meal times– mmf!” 

Ever the go-getter, Raphi has taken it upon herself to kiss Ivy, rambling be damned. She could normally listen to her ramble all day, but if she waits one more second she might scream. It doesn’t last long, but it’s soft and _oh_ , now she knows how Ashes feels when their lungs malfunction, or really how any of the Mechs with mechanized human parts must feel, because wow. All rational thought has fled her brain, and apparently her body– it’s so _warm_ and everything is swaying like the Aurora’s being chased in and out of the outer orbit of a star. Raph’s sure there will be Tests to run on this later– if kissing makes her lose all sense of equilibrium, for instance, that will have implications for when it should be permitted– but a new, soft part of her brain says simply _shut up, you idiot. Categorize **this.** _

Ivy looks similarly dumbstruck when she pulls back, and Raphi is struck again by how her face looks in the light of her wings. Scientist Raph thinks she wants to see how Ivy’s face looks in a lot of different environments, but Ivy is shuffling closer, and Raphi has no choice but to scoot backwards on her knees, and when they reach the wall Ivy just curls into her and lays her head on her chest. “Let’s try that again later, Raphi, I have ideas for experiments to run. If I ran them now, however, I believe there would be an eighty-seven% chance of me just falling the fuck asleep.” She yawns mightily. “Would you be open to such experiments in the future?”

It’s a scary thing to say, but Raphi’s pretty sure of it. “I would. One hundred percent.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the Mechs stowaway server for encouraging me, and for the Sprinto bot in the Magnus Writers discord for kicking my ass to write.
> 
> Working title: raphivy rights??????


End file.
